


out in the wilds of you and i

by eneiryu



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Hale Family Dynamics, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Temet Nosce, pack bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 09:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20112850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: Theo Raeken doesn’t trust him, and the irony is delicious.





	out in the wilds of you and i

**Author's Note:**

> I’d say I don’t know where this came from, but I know _exactly_ where this came from—I read [It’s Bad Enough We Get Along](https://archiveofourown.org/works/553082) by [febricant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/febricant/pseuds/febricant)—which is excellent and everyone should go read—and then this story wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it.

Peter finds the first body behind Raley’s five days after Monroe and her people flee town. The man’s eyes are wide with fear but there’s no sign of a struggle; the hunter had died, apparently, slow enough to see his death coming but too fast to do anything about it. Peter admires the efficient brutality of it; it takes skill to thread that particular needle.

He’s still studying the darkening bruise over the hunter’s crushed larynx—to prevent the shout—and the jarring angle of the hunter’s broken neck—to ensure a bloodless kill—when Theo Raeken comes back around the corner of the building and stops short, a tarp folded under his arm. Almost immediately Peter can see the young chimera’s nostrils flare, the move meant not for aggression but for information-gathering. Testing Peter’s scent, looking for clues about his intentions, because Theo knows better than to ask and wouldn’t trust a word that came out of Peter’s mouth regardless. Peter just smiles easily, knows that it’ll ratchet Theo’s mounting wariness higher because his easy scent is already narrowing Theo’s eyes; Theo too smart to trust _ that _ either.

“Hello, Theo,” Peter greets cheerfully, and keeps his posture easy to go along with his easy smile and his easy scent, “I see you ran into an old friend.”

“He was scouting for Monroe,” Theo snaps back, his fingers going white-knuckled around the tarp; his fingernails haven’t quite lengthened into claws, but Peter can read the urge in the way his knuckles flex, and relax.

“I don’t actually care,” Peter informs him, and toes at the dead hunter’s arm, “You might want to hurry, though. It would appear rigor mortis is setting in.”

Theo stares at him, tension in every line of his body, but his fingers are playing over the tarp still under his arm because Peter’s right, and Theo knows it. Peter cocks his head and studies him, and then he laughs, loud and delighted, and takes several long and deliberate steps back from the body, sweeps a hand out towards it in grand permission. The gesture is two-fold: light and mocking for the way it makes Theo’s upper lip twitch in a snarl, and purely practical, since it demonstrates that Peter and Peter’s claws are, now, out of reach of the body. 

The body that Theo needs to approach.

Theo hesitates a moment longer, but that same brutal efficiency evident from his kill shines through again; he moves forward purposefully after that single beat and kneels down next to the body, starts getting the tarp unfolded. He does kneel down on the _ other _ side of it from where Peter is still standing, and Peter smiles benevolently down at him, watches as Theo gets the body slid onto the tarp and wrapped up with quick, sure movements. 

The attention is bothering Theo, Peter knows, can see it in the way that Theo’s shoulders keep tensing up before Theo catches himself and forces them to relax again. The cyclic series of movements makes his discomfort even more obvious and Peter nearly tells him that, but finds himself letting it go. He feels light, almost _ jaunty_, and as Theo straightens up, the wrapped body draped over one shoulder and the not-insignificant weight of the not-insignificantly-sized man apparently troubling him not at all, Peter bounces a little on his toes and smiles winsomely at him.

“There’s a relatively untouched section of Preserve nearby,” Peter tells him, and tips his head towards the woods bordering Raley’s back lot, “I’d be happy to show you.”

Theo’s eyes narrow as he studies him, his frustration at being unable to trust his senses’ interpretation of Peter’s thoughts and motivations evident in the tight corners of his mouth; unaccustomed, maybe, to being only the second-best liar in a given situation. Peter just widens his smile and deliberately manipulates his scent further, easy to easier and worth it for the way that Theo’s eyes bleed gold for the space of a single heartbeat before he manages to shove the shift back down.

“I think I’ve got it,” Theo replies finally, hostility sharpening his vowels.

Peter just nods, and smiles again, and then tells him, “Well, I’m here if you need me,” pleasantly, and has to fight back—surprise flickering across his mind like a startled bird—the way that his grin wants to curve deeper, turn darker, at the way that the shift rises under Theo’s skin at the taunt, calling to the shift under his own.

But then he turns and walks away, back around the front of the store. He keeps his senses on Theo, though, amusement bubbling in his chest when it takes his disappearing around the other side of the building for Theo to be willing to move, to be willing to start heading into the woods with the hunter’s body—with Monroe’s dead _ scout_—over his shoulder. 

Peter loses track of Theo’s progress in the cacophony of the store, but even the way that some puffed-up mouse of a man tries to snarl at him after clumsily colliding with him in the produce section can’t puncture Peter’s good mood. Instead he lifts the corners of his lips to show off his shifted fangs, lets his eyes flare ice-blue in the harsh fluorescent lights of the store, and feels satisfaction shiver up his spine when the man immediately pales and scrambles backwards, turns and flees like _ prey_, his subconscious sensing the predator in the room. 

Peter watches him go, the shift slouching restlessly under his skin, and then he turns back to the display of fruit, starts measuring oranges in his hands with a smile still playing about his lips.

\---

Peter isn’t invited to Scott’s what-to-do-about-Monroe pack meeting, but he shows up anyway.

They don’t notice him at first, loud and chaotic as they are. Or _ most _ of them don’t notice when he slips through Derek’s front door while they’re still settling in, still boisterous with victory and reality not yet having seeped its way back in, but Theo does; his eyes snap to Peter’s and his posture goes rigid. But it goes rigid in a very particular way, and Peter finds his head cocking as he picks at the edges of the picture Theo makes, and then a wide, sharp smile takes his lips as he puts his finger on it; on Liam, now three-quarters hidden behind Theo’s tense frame. 

Peter looks back up to meet Theo’s hostile stare, ready to twist the knife of Theo having so clumsily given himself away, but then he stops, eyes narrowing, because there’s no self-recrimination there. Blank surprise blooms slowly in Peter’s mind for a moment, but then it melts away with the casual slouch Peter adopts as first Scott, and then Stiles, and then the full room finally catch on to his presence.

“Oh no, no _ way_,” Stiles squawks, “How did you even _ know _ about this?”

“Why, Scott told me,” Peter replies easily, and steps further into the room. Begins to circle it, in fact, only the barest thread of his attention on Stiles and the others, the majority of it on Theo as Peter’s changing position presents him with a dilemma.

“I did _ not_,” Scott denies instantly and vehemently, making a wild gesture when Stiles and Malia look over at him accusatorially.

That’s both true, and false, but Peter and Derek are probably the only two in the room with enough information to understand how. The pack sense in the back of Peter’s mind is weak, barely more than a frayed thread—he is not, after all, a member of Scott’s mismatched little pack—but the fact of the matter is that it was _ Peter’s _ pack before it was Scott’s, and it was his family’s for generations before that, and not even Scott’s true alpha will can fully deny Peter his connection to it, even if Scott knew enough to try to. As it is he closes his eyes and plucks at it, feels Derek’s irritation loud and clear, senses the give and take of Stiles’ and Scott’s silent argument, lets the bemusement of the rest of the pack watching the situation unfold wash over him.

And then he opens his eyes back up and grins at Theo, whose dislike is coming through so attenuated as to almost be lost, like a signal patched in through faulty wiring; Peter holds Theo’s eyes and narrows his focus on Liam through the pack sense, and Theo’s dislike sharpens into outright distrust; a radio frequency finally found after careful tuning.

“He’s here now,” Derek interrupts Stiles’ and Scott’s ongoing argument after another few seconds, “So.”

It takes another minute or so of grumbling, but eventually both Scott and Stiles begrudgingly acquiesce to Derek’s point, and Scott reluctantly starts the meeting. Peter listens with half an ear, curious in an offhand way to see what they come up with, but most of his focus he splits in two: the first bit to Malia, scent hot with animal instinct as she proposes to Scott that they give chase, that they _hunt_, and the second bit to Theo, whose eyes had never left Peter, and that follow him as Peter slowly makes his way around the room. Peter passes by Lydia, and Corey, and Mason, without so much as a twitch, but as his steps begin to take him past the angle of Theo’s shoulders, revealing Liam behind them, Theo’s stool creaks as he straightens in it, his fingers going white-knuckled around the seat. 

“Malia’s right, Scott,” Liam opines midway through the group’s debate on Malia’s proposal, “You guys should go after Monroe. We can stay here, protect the town.”

“Think you’re ready for that, do you?” Peter inquires mildly, and feels the spike of Theo’s panic through the pack sense—Peter’s focus still tuned to Liam tuned consciously or not to Theo—as Theo apparently anticipates what happens next.

Liam doesn’t, though; the second he turns to snap at Peter he freezes, Peter’s extended claws just brushing the bare skin of his throat. Behind him Scott and Malia immediately surge to their feet, Malia’s mouth already full of fangs, the both of them and Stiles already starting to yell; Derek just sighs and settles further into his seat, eyes rolling. But Peter pays them no mind, just holds his clawed fingers exactly where they are and flicks his eyes over Liam’s shoulder to meet Theo’s wide-eyed stare. Theo’s fingers have made splinters out of the seat of the stool and his frame is vibrating with so much tension that he looks in danger of shattering into pieces; Peter smiles at him, slow and syrupy.

And then he takes his now-human hand away from Liam’s throat, shakes his shoulders loose of the shift as he glances easily out over the rest of the room; point—or at least the point the majority of them think he was angling to make—made.

“Perhaps the subject requires some further discussion,” He offers innocently, and wanders away towards the staircase leading up to the loft and the absolutely _ fantastic _ water pressure of Derek’s shower, ignoring the tense atmosphere and Stiles yelling vitriolic commentary at his back.

He catches it, though, as he rounds the spiral staircase; he catches the way that Liam’s shaky pulse starts to level back out when he glances at Theo; when he unconsciously tugs—Peter catching it second-hand—at the pack sense, looking for Theo and finding him there, already waiting.

\---

Peter follows a bemused pet owner through Deaton’s mountain ash gate before Deaton can stop him, wanders away further into the exam room as Deaton talks with the young woman. 

Her pet—a sizable German Shepherd whose upper lip begins to curl back as it eyes Peter—is up on the exam table still, braided leather collar gleaming dully in the late afternoon sunlight coming through the windows. Peter smiles at the dog’s hostility, letting his eyes flash; the dog’s lips immediately fall back down with a whine, head lowering. 

“Yes, well,” Deaton says to the dog’s owner as he eyes Peter distastefully, “Apollo is doing excellently. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Peter waits with an air of benevolent patience as Deaton calls the dog—Apollo, apparently—down, strokes a hand over the glossy fur at the back of the dog’s neck, and then hands the animal off to its owner, who backs out of the exam room with one last, bewildered glance at Peter. Deaton leaves the mountain ash gate unsealed, which Peter _ could _ put down to Deaton’s paranoia about being locked in with him, but likely has more to do with Deaton’s lack of interest in being forced to let him out, later. Making himself comfortable, Peter settles back against a bare section of wall and watches benignly as Deaton comes back into the room.

Deaton doesn’t pretend not to know why he’s here. He starts cleaning up the various debris from his earlier examination of Apollo-the-German-Shepherd as he says, “Scott told me about his and the others’ plan to go after Monroe.”

“It’s a solid plan,” Peter agrees, though Deaton hadn’t expressed an opinion on the matter, “Minus the one, glaring issue with it.”

“The one, glaring issue that you could solve for them,” Deaton points out mildly, his attention on the supplies that he’s carefully restocking.

“Doctor Deaton, you flatter me,” Peter tells him coyly, and grins sharply when Deaton’s only response is to spare him a dry look, “You also give me too much credit. That’s not a solution I can offer on my own.”

“Malia wouldn’t refuse, and Derek would have already agreed, if he’d had the presence of mind to remember the option,” Deaton counters. 

Finished with putting his exam room back to rights, he moves on to opening up a slim laptop, updating what Peter has to assume is Apollo’s chart. The lack of attention is a boon, even setting aside Peter’s internal game to see if and how long it would take him to get under Deaton’s cool exterior; it means Deaton misses the way that Peter’s expression momentarily spasms out of its pleasant mask and into a snarl at the reminder of Derek’s oversight, and the reason for it. Kate Argent had a number of sins to pay for and arguably had _ already _ paid for them all—Peter had taken _ great _ pleasure in staring down at the mangled corpses of her and her father—but one of the greatest of which is the way she’d stolen Derek’s family from him, not just in body but in mind: too many memories too painful for Derek to touch.

Peter pulls himself together just in time to hear Deaton conclude, “And you and Derek both know where to find Cora.” He pauses in his paperwork, looks up to meet Peter’s eyes calmly, “Which leaves you. And—” He adds, expression—and scent, and pulse—as inscrutable as ever, “—whatever it is you want in exchange.”

Peter smiles at him and doesn’t respond right away, just pushes off the wall and starts meandering his way around the exam room, pausing every now and then to bend down and read a label, or prod at a piece of equipment. Back when Deaton was Talia’s emissary, Peter had found Deaton’s chosen profession a never-ending source of delight. He’d trail his sister into the clinic just for the opportunity to make the obvious joke; to put himself on the table and hold out his arm, declare himself ready for his shots, or lean too close to Deaton after he and Talia had wrapped whatever business they had as if nosing for a treat. 

Talia had never found it funny but she’d also never intervened, and Peter had wondered at that fact the way some humans would prod at a loose tooth—helplessly and incessantly—until the first time he’d seen Deaton in a fight. After that, well.

After that.

Peter comes to a stop just off Deaton’s shoulder, close enough that he can feel the other man’s heat. Deaton doesn’t so much as twitch, just continues entering his notes, and Peter grins, widely, leans down a little closer so that his mouth is hovering right next to Deaton’s ear.

“Who says I want anything?” Peter asks him, and even Deaton can’t stop his body’s reflexive reaction, the goosebumps that rise on his skin as Peter’s breath skates across his cheek and jaw.

But Deaton _ can _ control his conscious reaction, which is to huff a sigh and then turn, too fast even for Peter to respond and retreat, and slam a hand against the center of Peter’s chest. Peter goes flying backwards with a startled gasp and lands flat on his back in the clinic’s waiting room, the back of his skull cracking painfully against the floor as he slides the last foot or so until one of the chairs impedes his progress. He’s just blinking his dazed vision back clear when he sees Deaton step up and swing the mountain ash gate closed, Deaton on the far side and Peter on its near.

“I’m afraid my schedule is a bit too full to play games with you today, Peter,” Deaton informs him levelly as Peter forces himself over onto one elbow, stares—panting and feeling his ribs knitting back together—up at him.

Outside a car door slams; another patient arriving. Peter smirks—knows his smile is bloody because he can taste it on his teeth—and climbs painfully to his feet just as the clinic door opens, a young family with a cat carrier in the youngest son’s hand stepping inside. 

“Feel free to make an appointment for later in the week,” Deaton finishes, and then turns to greet the family; dismissing him.

Peter makes sure to smile at the family as he’s leaving, close-mouthed and charming and making both the mother and father stammer and blush as he passes them. In the back of his mind the pack sense is thrumming with amusement; it’s Derek, clearly having felt Peter’s surprise and subsequent injury, and managing to tease out the barest of details before Peter can cut him off. But it’s not irritation or embarrassment that fills Peter’s chest as he slides into his car, slams the door. Closing his eyes, he lets himself sink into the hot churn in his gut for a moment; shifts just to feel his half-hard cock slide against the inside of his jeans. 

Then he grins, and opens his eyes, and starts the engine.

\---

The second and third bodies Peter finds at the same time, and with Theo Raeken’s full-shifted fangs still buried in the throat of the third.

He rips them out as he senses Peter’s presence, the dying man falling to the ground of the preserve with a choked gurgle, but Peter has no interest in the dead. Or, at least, no interest in _ that _ particular dead; he starts to circle Theo as he picks at his scent, looking for the taste of gravedirt hidden subtle inside it; a remnant, likely permanent, of his time with the skinwalkers. Theo bares his bloody teeth at him as Peter steps and steps around him, his canine body stiff with coiled tension and his eyes flared gold. 

Theo’s instincts are so clearly riding high that it’s no surprise when Peter checks the pack sense—hopping from Scott to Liam to Theo—only to find the barest hint of his human consciousness, the rest just raw _ animal _. Smirking, he stops moving and settles down onto the balls of his feet, weight shifting onto his toes. The curl of Theo’s bared lip falls in his confusion, but Theo realizes—Peter catching it both on his lupine expression _ and _ on a half-second delay through the pack sense—too late what’s coming, has barely managed to turn to start sprinting away before Peter is on him, the claws of one hand driving down and into the muscles of Theo’s canine neck, pinning him.

Yelping, Theo tries to turn and snap at him with his deadly teeth, tries to scrabble away with the sheer bulk of his lupine body. But Peter just grins and twists his fingers until he feels the edges of his claws saw against the edges of Theo’s spinal cord, and Theo gives a lupine shriek and finally goes still, trembling under his hand. 

Across town Liam goes rigid, Peter can feel it through the pack sense, and then, like dominoes, can feel it as the pack sense lights up as one by one the rest of Scott’s mismatched band of misfits clock Liam’s confusion and concern and react to it. Peter isn’t worried; of all of them, only Derek’s sense of the pack bond is mature enough to actually be able to manipulate, the rest of them instinctually aware of it but little more. And besides, Peter thinks—twisting his hand in warning when Theo’s muscles start to stiffen for another run at resisting Peter’s hold—even if they were, not a one of them would likely be able to trace Liam’s agitation back to its source; the switchpoint of Liam connecting Theo to the pack sense through sheer, subconscious force of will. 

Still, Peter carves off a section of his own place in the pack bond, leaves it for Derek to find calm and unbothered if he comes looking, and leans a little further, a little harder over Theo as he clucks his tongue and tells him, “Theo, Theo, Theo. This is beginning to become a bit of a thing with you, isn’t it.”

Theo snarls at him but keeps still, and Peter smiles down at the top of his head and goes flicking through the flashes and sense-impressions he can catch of Theo’s thoughts and memories through the pack sense. He sees Theo’s first glimpse of the hunters, innocuous at a gas station on the outskirts of town, the rise of anger and _something_ _else_ Theo had felt as his mind had flashed to Liam oblivious somewhere in the hallowed halls of the high school. Then the tracking. The hunt. The _kill_.

But, more interestingly: the hideout Theo had found while following the hunters, four more in a pair of rundown motel rooms the next town over.

Beneath his hand Theo has stopped fighting, but Peter realizes his error in the next second, Theo too smart and too well-trained and too _ brutally efficient _ not to realize what Peter’s doing, to discover the thread of him insinuating its way through Theo’s mind. The instant he gets ahold of the connection Theo reverses it like a system reversing polarity, and he’s _ there _ and in Peter’s mind before Peter can stop him. 

But smart as he is Theo is still young, and lacking the necessary experience to recognize the difference between cunning and _ recklessness_; Peter clamps down on the mental thread of Theo present in his mind through the pack sense and _ squeezes_. 

Theo _ howls_.

This time when the pack sense lights up it’s nearly incandescent. But it’s still directionless, Scott and his mismatched pack able to feel Liam’s panic but not Theo’s distress behind it, Liam himself aware only of the overwhelming feeling of _ wrongness _ without the necessary knowledge to understand the _ why_; without the necessary knowledge to understand how he’d anchored himself to Theo, and Theo to himself.

“That—” Peter chides Theo, absently aware of it when Derek _ does _ come looking for him through the pack sense, but finds only what Peter wanted him to find; Peter calm and distracted and certainly _ not _ with his claws buried in Theo’s neck, “—was very rude, Theo. Especially after the way I kept our last little run-in to myself, no?”

Theo manages to swallow back the pained, submissive whine his instincts try to give voice to, but Peter can feel it trapped and vibrating in the muscles under his hand. _ Pride goeth_, Peter thinks, amused, but eases up just a little on his hold; feels the flesh and nerves start knitting themselves back together against his clawed fingertips still deep in Theo’s neck as he does. 

He keeps his grip on the mental thread of Theo’s mind present in his own, though, holds it fast as he tells him, “Let’s try this again, shall we?”

This time when he goes looking through Theo’s mind—dragging the thread of Theo’s consciousness back where it belongs as he does—Theo doesn’t fight him, or try to get clever. Instead he stays trembling with pain and _ rage _ and not a little humiliation—and not a little fear—and waits, impotently, as Peter takes his time flicking through Theo’s thoughts and memories, looking for more information on the hunters Theo had found. 

It’s easy enough. Surprisingly so, in fact: Theo had done a ruthlessly thorough reconnaissance of the motel and the four remaining hunters before tracking the two dead hunters—their bodies just starting to cool—down. Opening up eyes that had slid closed while he’d gone searching, Peter cocks his head and studies the curves and lines of Theo’s lupine head, impressed despite himself. He doesn’t realize that the sentiment had slipped-slid through the pack sense and the thread of Peter’s consciousness still present in Theo’s mind until he feels Theo’s blank surprise when he catches it. 

But instead of jerking back from the connection or trying to hide it, Peter lets it blossom into outright approval, feels it both in Theo’s body underneath his hand and in Theo’s mind when Theo shivers with shock and helpless gratification, _ hungry _ for it. Smiling down at him, Peter slowly—_slowly_—eases his clawed fingers free of Theo’s neck, though he leaves his hand resting against the fur between Theo’s shoulderblades as he draws the lingering pain from his hold out and away from Theo’s body to speed up his healing.

Suspicion curdles in Theo’s mind as he immediately scrambles away from Peter, turning to face him with his upper lip just starting to peel back from his teeth. Peter just keeps smiling at him as he climbs back to his feet. He doesn’t close his connection to the pack sense, though, and in fact widens the valve of it a little more; an invitation to the part of Theo’s mind he can feel pacing around the edge of Peter’s consciousness, having apparently learned his lesson the first time.

“Well, it seems you and I have some work to do,” Peter tells him, and nearly laughs when Theo’s surprise causes him to all but mentally trip into Peter’s mind through the pack sense. 

But he recovers quickly, lupine eyes narrow as he tentatively, and then more confidently as Peter doesn’t protest, starts to explore Peter’s thoughts, the plan spooling out in his mind. His suspicion—still colored by his helpless thirst for Peter’s approval, the two tangling together in a way that Peter knows is going to keep Theo up nights—remains, but as he searches Peter’s mind—or the parts of it that Peter lets him search, anyway—something else rises beside it, anticipation and excitement and not a little _ violence _ tinting his thoughts and spicing his scent.

“Shall we?” Peter asks him, and doesn’t wait for a response before starting to move. 

Theo—after only a beat of hesitation—Theo follows.

\---

Chris Argent corners him inside the only cafe in Beacon Hills capable of making a latte worthy of the name two days later.

He smells, as ever, of wolfsbane and gunpowder, though Peter notes with interest the lighter floral note of Melissa McCall’s perfume on his clothes, starting to settle in, and hides his smile behind his cup as he takes a drink, because Argent already reeks of aggression and suspicion. They’re in the far corner by the section of counter where the baristas slide the finished drinks, but Argent doesn’t seem to care about the annoyed patrons having to maneuver around them; he uses his not inconsiderable bulk and the threat of his training to block Peter’s access to the door.

“Something I can help you with?” Peter inquires innocently, a benign smile on his face.

“Where are Monroe’s hunters?” Argent demands, hissing it low because the barista currently taking orders had been one of Monroe’s eager little conscripts before Scott had killed the Anuk-ite.

Peter just raises an eyebrow, “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

Argent’s upper lip starts to lift in a snarl, but a harrried father of three—his shrieking offspring hanging off his legs and arms—pushes past him, uncaring of Argent’s aura of hostility as he retrieves his drink; he even goes so far as to throw Argent a dirty look over his shoulder as he pushes _ back _past him. Peter is waiting, a bland expression of patient interest on his face, when Argent manages to refocus on him, but interrupted or not, Argent is, well, an Argent; he recovers quickly and redistributes his weight back over his feet: settling in.

“I know Monroe has been sending scouts into town,” Argent snaps, “My contacts who’ve been able to infiltrate her operation confirmed it. And yet—” He pauses, gesturing around the cafe and presumably the larger swath of Beacon Hills around it, “—there’s been no sign of them.”

“That sounds like an odd thing to be complaining about,” Peter points out, and doesn’t move an inch when Argent takes a threatening step forward.

They’re starting to get looks from the other patrons, the noise level in the cafe dropping dramatically as more and more people notice their confrontation, but Argent doesn’t get a chance to address their gawking curiosity; the cafe door opens and Malia pops through, her brow furrowing as she notices the tension and looks around. Nearly simultaneously Monroe’s former follower sets Malia’s monstrosity of a frozen coffee drink down, and Peter claims it with a charming smile, touches his own coffee cup to his temple in a salute as the young barista colors and hurries away. 

Holding up her drink to catch Malia’s attention, Peter waits until she’s spotted him to turn back to Argent, smile still as charming solely for the way he can hear it set Argent’s teeth to grinding, “If it’s job security you’re worried about, I wouldn’t be too concerned. This is Beacon Hills.” Peter tells him, and only _ now _ lets his smile sharpen into something a little less human, “There’s always _ something else_, isn’t there?”

Argent looks like he wants to push the matter—looks like he wants to push a whole lot else, too—but Malia finishes weaving her way through the cafe crowd and he desists, greets her with a warm, “Hey, Malia.”

“What were you two talking about?” Malia asks curiously, accepting her drink from Peter when he offers it.

“Chris was just telling me about some rumors he’d heard about Monroe sending people into town,” Peter tells her before Argent can respond, tags the way that Argent’s eyes narrow at Peter’s casual use of his first name, “Have you seen anything?”

“Huh. No, I haven’t noticed anything,” Malia answers, shrugging, and takes a sip of her ridiculous drink before she adds, “It’s been kind of nice, actually.”

Peter beams first at her, then at Argent, “I bet. Shall we?” He asks her, gesturing towards the large overstuffed chairs in the back corner of the cafe that he’d quickly learned are Malia’s preferred seats. Then he stops, cocking his head and letting his brow furrow as he looks back at Argent and wonders, “Unless there was anything else…?”

Argent stares at him for a long second, but then he forces a smile—one that doesn’t go anywhere near his eyes—onto his face, aims it first at Peter and then at Malia as he says, “No, please. I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Peter murmurs, and knows that his eyes are just a little _ too _ bright as Argent looks back, his mouth going hard; Malia, bless her, ignores the byplay with her usual aplomb and heads for the chairs Peter had indicated and settles in.

Argent gives Peter one last long, narrow look, and then he turns and leaves empty-handed; several of the eyes in the cafe follow him, glance back at Peter before quickly returning their attention to their phones, or laptops, or giggling friends. Peter lets their whispers—the ones that they’re so certain he can’t hear—wash over him, holds up one finger when Malia glances over and detours back to the cashier to pick up two seran-wrapped cookies, leaves a ten-dollar bill on the counter in exchange as he makes his way over to Malia, slides into the chair opposite her. He holds out one of the cookies and she takes it with a grin, settles back into her chair as she starts to unwrap it; as she starts to talk. 

Peter leans back in his own chair and takes his time unwrapping his own cookie, peeling the clinging plastic back piece by piece as he interjects with a comment that makes Malia snort with laughter; as he listens to his daughter—who hadn’t noticed anything to do with Monroe’s hunters, and who’d found that fact kind of nice—talk.

\---

Peter doesn’t have to tailgate any of Deaton’s patients into the exam room this time, primarily because he beats Deaton to the clinic and is laying flat on his back on the exam table with his arms folded lightly over his chest when Deaton walks in.

There’s no way Deaton wasn’t aware of his presence before he set foot in the building and he betrays no surprise when he enters the room, just sets his simple brown leather bag down and pulls the clinic’s ancient laptop to himself, starts checking the day’s schedule. Peter spends a few seconds listening to the clack of the keys and the beat of Deaton’s heart, and then he lets himself sink back into the pack sense. Here in the clinic and surrounded by the subtle sting of mountain ash, the scents of the herbs Deaton has stashed away and the understated thrum of Deaton’s banked power, all of it ever unchanged from the way it’d been back when the Hale territory had been so in more than just name, Peter can forget for whole minutes at a time that the pack he’s reaching out to, that reaches unconsciously back, isn’t the one that had been.

But Scott is a different kind of alpha than Talia had been, the burn of his core at the center of the pack sense hotter and more unpredictable than Talia’s steady glow, and the bonds that connect his mismatched pack one to the other are forged from catastrophe and choice, not ritual and blood. Peter opens his eyes in the dim light of the exam room, Deaton having forgone the overhead lights in favor of the early morning sun streaming in through the windows, and breathes, for a moment; holds onto the mingled sense of old and new still tangled together in his mind and just breathes.

“Derek stopped by yesterday,” Deaton eventually offers, sounding offhand and distracted as he shifts in his stool to check a pad of handwritten notes before returning to his laptop.

“Did he, now,” Peter murmurs, even though he knows, had felt the painful twist through the pack sense as Derek had stepped inside; Peter not the only one for whom the clinic brings back instinctive, helpless memories.

Deaton hums in absent acknowledgement, “He thought he remembered something about the Hale connection to this land. A way to protect it.”

Peter feels an entirely unconscious and entirely unasked for bloom of pride in his chest at that, finds himself smirking at the ceiling as he thinks _ good for him_. He nearly wipes the grin off his face before remembering that Deaton isn’t looking at him, lets it stay. Out on the edges of the pack sense Derek is talking with someone, half-focused and half-anxious and with a warmth layered over all of it; working with the Sheriff, then, and with his fondness for the Sheriff’s son coloring his fondness for the man, himself. 

“And did you tell him?” Peter wonders, though he knows the answer to _ that_, too; if Deaton had, Derek would have gone immediately to Scott, his birthright offered out without thought, or reservations.

“No,” Deaton answers, though he must know that Peter had already known that, his original intent in offering the information up and the entirety of the conversation itself merely an opening for something else. For the way that he pauses, minutely, and then explains, “It seemed unwise to get their hopes up, before I knew whether they’d be able or willing to pay the price.”

Peter smirks, and then turns his head to the side so that he can look at Deaton, who doesn’t look back, the muscles of his shoulders flexing and flexing as he continues to tap away at his laptop, “Why do you always assume I have a price?”

“Because you always have,” Deaton answers simply, evenly; no insinuation or judgement or anything, really, but raw truth.

“Not always,” Peter disagrees, and deliberately misunderstands Deaton’s statement as he says: “Once I had a family.”

That _ does _ cause Deaton to pause, his fingers and shoulders stilling, the folded-down bulk of him—so easy to mistake for ordinary, for harmless—straightening. He turns just enough that he can look over his shoulder at Peter, meet his eyes with that same inscrutable look on his face—the one that Peter was always pulling at, digging at, back when he’d follow Talia here, desperate to see what was underneath—that he’s always worn. It’s been years since Peter has seen it aimed at him but it works just as well as it ever did, Peter stiffening, all his clever games and clever remarks suddenly vanishing from his mind.

“You _ have _ a family,” Deaton corrects pointedly, and holds Peter’s eyes for the space of a breath, two.

And then he turns away, returns to his laptop and his charts and his full day of four-legged patients and their attendant humans; their attendant complications. He turns away and leaves Peter staring at the slope of his back, seemingly unprotected if Peter didn’t know much, much better. He turns away, and leaves Peter to the way that he can feel Derek come looking for him, conversation with the Sheriff broken off mid-sentence and concern in the shape of him as he reaches out through the pack sense; as Malia reaches out, too, instinctually and clumsily and clearly without consciously realizing it, but _ there _ and present and brushing up against the edges of Peter’s self through the bond. 

Eyes still fixed on Deaton’s back, Peter answers the inquisitive press of Derek’s mind with a dismissive—but not unfriendly—push, soothes Malia’s unconscious concern with a stroke across the half-wild sense of her; settles the rest of the disturbed pack sense with a subtle wave of calm, of serenity; of safety. 

And then he closes his eyes and turns his head back straight, and breathes; takes in the scent of the clinic around him and Deaton inside it and just breathes.

\---

Peter doesn’t have to find the fourth—or eighth, depending on how one counts—body, because Theo reaches out through the pack sense and tells him about it.

When he arrives at the location Theo had indicated, the hunter is still alive, trapped in the middle of the cage Scott and his mismatched pack had used to capture a Ghost Rider. The man reeks of fear, his eyes flicking from the electrified chain-link hemming him in to Theo—sat calm and near motionless across the room with his elbows braced on his knees, his hands hanging loose between them—like he isn’t sure which he should be more afraid of. Peter smirks, and closes the door behind him.

“You know,” He tells Theo thoughtfully as he comes further into the room, “Argent is fairly confident that his spies are going to be able to uncover Monroe’s location.”

“Yeah, he is,” Theo agrees, and tosses him something.

Peter catches the phone and looks down at it, the screen already unlocked and a candid shot of Malia lighting up the display. _ Rage _ burns through him, quick and fierce, but Peter breathes through it, plays a hunch and swipes his thumb right, smirks knowingly when he sees the second candid shot, stares down at the photo of Liam just exiting the high school. Even from the other side of the room Peter can smell Theo’s banked fury, and even if he couldn’t; he can feel Theo lit up from the inside out with it through the pack sense, his stillness not that of calm, but of a predator. 

Humming lightly, Peter closes out of the photo at the same time that he sends threads of himself out through the pack sense. As expected the text thread containing the photos identifying the hunter’s ordered targets gives up nothing further but an unsaved number, but it’s not like Peter doesn’t _ know _ who’s on the other end of the obvious burner. Locking the hunter’s phone, Peter weighs it in his hand just as he tags Malia through the pack sense, oblivious and content in the McCall kitchen with Scott and Melissa, eating takeout from Giovanni’s and laughing easily. She clocks his presence instinctually but doesn’t fight it, presses back just as subconsciously; a brief bloom of warmth in Peter’s mind.

Liam isn’t nearly so welcoming; he goes rigid when Peter brushes up against his consciousness, the sudden move leaving a streak of highlighter across the textbook page he’d been bent over. Peter laughs under his breath, not particularly surprised. The last time he’d seen Liam in the flesh, Liam had been coming out of Daniel’s Diner downtown with Theo on his heels; he’d caught sight of Peter and snarled at him with a mouthful of fangs, had gotten a hand around Theo’s wrist and started dragging him faster away towards his beat-up SUV in the parking lot. 

Theo, though; Theo had looked over his shoulder at Peter for a brief, held moment, and then he’d gone where Liam had led.

Shaking himself free of the memory, Peter goes to withdraw from Liam’s mind when he realizes all at once that he’s not the only one present; he reflexively checks the second thread he’d sent winding its way to Malia, and recognizes the same, subtle presence there, too. Across the room Theo stiffens and immediately starts to pull the exposed parts of himself back, but Peter stops him; he doesn’t clamp down on the threads of Theo’s consciousness the way he had in the woods with his claws in Theo’s neck, but he holds him fast, stops his retreat. 

At first he isn’t even sure _ why_, the action instinctive, thoughtless. Theo’s breathing and pulse start to speed, maybe—definitely, Peter realizes, his mind wrapped around Theo’s with all the attendant bleed—expecting pain, but after a moment’s hesitation Peter doesn’t bear down, or release him; he pulls him further into the pack sense. Peter’s greater experience and familiarity with it lets him manipulate it in ways that Theo can’t, Theo mostly limited to hovering around the edges of the others within the pack sense and not much else, but now… _ Now _ Peter takes him further, into the warm wash of Malia’s and Scott’s easy contentment, Derek’s good-natured irritation at being bothered, the quiet burn of Corey’s and Mason’s affection, Lydia’s fond exasperation for Stiles’ close by and being himself; Liam’s benign distraction as he refocuses on his homework, Peter’s earlier visit shaken off.

The parts of Theo still held in Peter’s grasp go quiet, stunned; a little awed. Without realizing it he opens himself up to the pack sense, and back in the room Peter can hear him shudder out a gasp, his breathing gone shaky and uneven. Releasing his mental hold, Peter feels it as Theo manages to sustain the connections for a single breath, two, before he loses hold of them without Peter there to act as a crutch and he crashes back into himself. When Peter opens up his eyes, Theo is staring at him, chest heaving and his face doing an absolutely terrible job of concealing his shock, his confusion; his helpless, desperate _ longing_.

His suspicion, too, but that’s the least of it for Peter. That truth at least is simple: Theo is protective of a pack that he doesn’t think will allow him to protect it, his actions—always so delightfully effective and delightfully vicious—taken when and where he’s sure they won’t notice. But Peter _ has _ noticed. And so he smiles, and tosses the hunter’s phone back to Theo—who nearly fumbles it, still wrong-footed from his brief journey deeper into the pack sense—and turns to the hunter still in his cage, who’d backed up as far as he could get without running into one of the electrified walls.

“Well,” Peter announces, and lets his eyes flare blue, his teeth sharpen behind his smiling lips as he studies the trapped hunter, “Waste not, want not, and all that, no?”

Theo hesitates behind him for a second longer, Peter can feel it, and then he comes to stand beside him. Peter glances over, and Theo’s eyes bleed gold, his mouth filling with fangs as he smirks back. 

“Waste not, want not,” Theo echoes, agreeing, and Peter’s ears catch it when Theo squeezes the hunter’s phone—with Liam’s picture somewhere inside it—hard enough in his pocket to crack it.

\---

Peter wakes up two days later with such a splitting headache that he doesn’t even have to consult the pack sense to find Derek; he locates him at the ruins of the Hale house merely by following the searing pain to its source.

Derek is kneeling in the exact middle of the burned-out living room, his shirt drenched with sweat and every muscle Peter can see standing out in stark relief as he strains at the magic soaked through into the ground beneath his feet, and strains at the pack sense around and inside himself, trying desperately to connect the two together. Dotted around Beacon Hills Scott’s mismatched pack is taking the brunt of the consequences, the lot of them huddled under comforters and curled up on couches as Derek yanks hard enough on the pack sense for the sensation to translate into physical _ pain_. 

The only one still on their feet is Liam, which Peter quickly realizes is because Theo has pulled the same trick he once pulled on Peter, reversing the polarity of his and Liam’s connection and pulling Liam into himself, shielding Liam from the worst of the blowback. Smirking, Peter flicks away Theo’s agitated inquiry when Theo feels Peter brush up against his consciousness, and gives the thread of himself that Theo immediately attempts to snake back through the pack sense a warning squeeze. Theo desists, but only because—Peter feeling the echo secondhand—his lapse in concentration exposes more of Liam to the stretched-taut pack sense, and Liam staggers with it; Theo immediately retreats to pull Liam protectively back into himself.

Confident for the moment that Theo is too focused on shielding Liam to risk trying to force an answer from him, Peter refocuses on Derek; on where Derek has lost his hold on the Hale pack bond to the once Hale pack territory and is now collapsed back onto his hands and folded knees, panting in huge, uneven breaths. The slackening of his grip on the pack sense means that Peter’s headache goes from splitting to merely teeth-clenching, and it means that out around Beacon Hills Scott’s mismatched pack relaxes some, too, but only in increments; the strain from the overstretched pack sense lingering like a muscle forced too far out of joint for too long. 

But Peter ignores them, for the moment; ignores the way that a handful of them instinctively reach out through the pack sense, unconsciously looking for the source of their recent pain. He knows but they don’t that they’re not going to be able to reach Derek no matter their clumsy best intentions, Derek too exhausted and too distressed and pulled too far into himself to even realize they’re trying to. Peter spends a handful of moments studying the slope of Derek’s heaving back, the way that his claws have dug furrows into the fire-warped wood beneath his hands, and then he very deliberately kicks a foot out to catch a loose hunk of debris to send it clattering across the floor.

Derek immediately whips around, fang-mouthed and blue-eyed and with _ threat _ exploding out from the sense of him like a shockwave, but Peter doesn’t so much as flinch. 

“What are you doing?” Peter asks him, and doesn’t mean the shift.

Derek stares at him, sides and chest heaving and clawed hands extended out wide, but as his instinctive defensive reaction fades and gets replaced by confusion, it all just serves to make him look—hollow. Drawn tight and with his shifted skin stretched too thin over his shifted bones, like one is sitting uneasily on the other. It’s almost a relief when Derek lets the shift melt away; when the glow of his shifted eyes stops lighting up the ruins of the rooms that they both once walked in, slept in; lived in.

“I remembered,” Derek finally manages to say, the syllables awkward, too round where they should be sharp and too sharp where they should be round, like Derek is trying reacquaint himself to speaking with a human jaw, “I remembered that Talia—” He seems to remember who he’s talking to—too used to talking to people with no sense of his pack’s history, maybe, too used to talking to people for whom Derek’s family was only ever abstract—and says instead, “_ Mom _ could do—do _ something_, connect the pack to the land, help one protect the other…”

Out in the pack sense Scott’s mismatched pack is growing more insistent in their attempts to reach Derek, the pain of Derek’s abuse of the pack sense fading more and more as time goes on and enabling them to do what they do best; _ talk _ , incessantly, both at and with each other, trying to piece together exactly what had happened to them. Liam’s baffled confusion at his apparently being spared the worst of the experience is absently amusing, and Theo’s paranoid skulking at the edge of Liam’s consciousness is even more so, but Peter walls them off. Walls them _ all _ off, both from himself and from Derek, who’s still staring at him, his expression raw like an open wound.

“Yes, she could,” Peter agrees, easily and still with one shoulder leaned up against the burnt-out entryway of what was once the Hale house living room, his hands tucked in his pockets, “But you’re not Talia,” Peter reminds him, and then adds, “And neither is Scott.”

It’s a two-fold blow and Derek bows low over both, his blue-not-red eyes flickering and his consciousness arrowing out in a reflexive search for his not-Hale alpha. He runs right into the wall Peter had put up but he doesn’t even notice, just staggers a few feet to the side until he can collapse down onto the ruined steps leading up to the wreck of the second floor, his head in his hands. He’s ten feet from the crater where Peter had resurrected himself using Derek’s unwilling help and fifty feet from the grave where he’d buried Laura after Peter had killed her, and threaded through it all is the fact that he’s been here for hours, now, breathing in the ashes of the home—of the _ life _—that Kate Argent stole from him. 

Peter watches him, and doesn’t move.

But he does start dismantling the wall he’d put up between Derek and the others, piece by piece. He does it slow, and steady, lets the press of Scott’s and his mismatched pack’s concern start to leak through like water through a crack in a dam, growing wider and wider until Peter doesn’t have to keep pulling the wall down; Scott’s and the other’s determination doing it on their own. Derek doesn’t notice at first, not consciously, the air continuing to move unsteadily in and out of his lungs as he breathes, but as the hole in the wall in the pack sense that Peter had thrown up between Derek and the others gets wider—as Scott and the others force their way through it—the heaving of his shoulders starts to slow, the curled-tight sense of him starts to ease; only unconsciously, still, but that won’t last.

And so Peter keeps watching, and keeps waiting, sunk deep in the pack sense and tugging subtly at it at times, pushing subtly at it at others, until the memory of the burnt-out Hale house blooms in the minds of Scott and each of his misfit strays. He keeps watching, and keeps waiting, until first Stiles and then Scott and then Lydia and the rest suddenly stiffen in realization. 

He leaves when he hears the first car pull up, slipping out the back of the ruin of the old Hale house and leaving Derek inside it; leaving Derek to the star-bright pinpricks of Scott’s mismatched pack converging like a constellation around him, until even Peter can’t tease them apart in the pack sense, one bleeding into the next into the next; one single, sun-bright glow.

\---

Deaton still drives the same car that he used to back when he’d park it next to Talia’s ridiculous Camaro, the dull sun-bleached gray of it as eye-glazingly easy to overlook as ever.

Peter sidles up to him as he’s loading paper bags into his trunk in the parking lot of Raley’s, the sun just starting to set and turning the sky a blazing sort of fire-like orange that makes Peter’s teeth itch with the urge to become fangs. He gives no indication that he notices Peter’s presence, or at least he doesn’t until Peter—grinning and with something savage twisting in his chest—reaches forward and retrieves a bag from Deaton’s cart, slots it neatly next to the bag Deaton just finished loading. The action puts them nearly chest to chest for the span of time it takes Deaton to pause, expression calculating, and then Deaton smiles blandly at him and turns away to reach for the next bag.

Peter knows better than to try to out-silence Deaton, and so he leans back against the open trunk—more than a little in the way of Deaton’s continued efforts—and smiles just as benignly back at Deaton as he asks, “Let’s say I agree. How can you even be sure it’ll work?”

Deaton sets down the bag he’d been loading into the trunk—leaning around Peter to do it—and then studies Peter levelly for a long second before answering, “Derek didn’t fail because your family’s ability to tap into the Hale pack’s bond to the land is gone.”

Something satisfied and more than a little _ sharp _ blooms in Peter’s chest, “So you did feel him trying.” He observes, mouth curling up in a slick smile that’s more than half a snarl, “And you didn’t try to stop him.”

“Strangely enough,” Deaton replies mildly as he moves for the next bag, “He didn’t bother to consult me first.”

Peter watches him, all the spike-edged amusement in his chest catching and turning into something else; something that causes his fingers to flex in his pockets as the tips of them prickle and pinch. Out in the pack sense Peter can feel Derek at the Stilinski house, orbited and orbiting the two bright flickers of Stiles and Lydia, same as he had been since the two of them—flanked by the rest of Scott’s mismatched pack and by Theo, stood physically just off Liam’s shoulder but mentally with not a breath of air between them—had pulled him from the ruin of the Hale house just over twenty-four hours ago. The pack sense connecting them all together is still tender and strained, a limb that will barely sustain weight, and Peter has to resist the urge to _ yank _ at it; the urge strong and sharp and _ violent_.

“The Hale pack alphas are _ gone _ , Alan,” Peter reminds him, and has to fight back a shudder, fight back wince, when he cuts open his tongue on his suddenly-sharp teeth, the taste of the words like Laura’s blood in Peter’s mouth, like his blood in Derek’s; like the stale air of a church in Mexico that had stayed standing through the force of an earthquake off the power of sheer _ belief_.

Deaton has finished packing up his car; he reaches for the trunk and starts closing it, the edge of the metal scraping Peter’s back as he stays exactly where he is, his eyes never leaving Deaton’s face. Less fragile beings than Deaton have refused to turn their back on Peter but Deaton does it without seeming care, pushing his ridiculous cart before him until he can store it responsibly in a nearby corral, return to his car. For a moment Peter thinks that Deaton is going to round it for the driver’s seat, considers exactly how he’ll translate the slow-burning twist of feeling in his chest into _ action_, but Deaton stops at the trunk, stood close enough to Peter that Peter could reach out and touch him, if he wanted; he curls his fingers tighter in his pockets.

“Yes,” He agrees, meeting Peter’s eyes with his same, ever-unchanged and ever-unchangeable expression, and answers Peter’s earlier comment—his earlier _ accusation_—as if no time had passed at all, “But I do wonder if that’s the only way for the Hale pack to live on.”

And then he _ does _ round his car, pulling his keys from his pocket and unlocking it with an oddly muted and oddly jarring _ beep-beep _ as he goes. Peter doesn’t move immediately, still staring at the blank space where Deaton was, but then the engine turns over and he stands, reflexively and quickly because Deaton is exactly the type of person to drive away with Peter still sitting up against his trunk. Beacon Hills is a small town and Raley’s parking lot is smaller, and it doesn’t take long for Deaton’s car to disappear from sight as Peters watches, turned down Palmera and off to wherever he lives; an enduring mystery that Peter has never been able to solve: then or now.

He stands staring after Deaton in the empty space where his car had been for a long stretch of minutes; long enough for a bewildered professional in a sleek-but-not-_ too _-sleek sedan to idle for half a minute before giving up and finding a spot further down. He stays staring after Deaton and then, that slow-burn twist of feeling catching and licking across his lungs like flame, he sends a mental thread out through the pack sense; searching. He skirts around Scott and brushes up against Derek, against Malia, skips past Stiles and Lydia and Corey and Mason and then hovers for a moment at Liam. 

And then he reaches past him, and gets a mental hand around the shadow-limned eclipse of Theo burning steadily there, and _ yanks_. 

\---

Theo is waiting exactly where Peter had ordered him to be when Peter pulls up outside his cheap-but-clean apartment complex in the more industrial part of downtown.

“That was fucking unnecessary,” Theo tells him as Peter rolls to a stop, his windows already down to let in the crisp, soon-to-be-winter air. 

Peter just smiles beautifically at him and leans over to open the passenger-side door, already perfectly positioned in front of Theo, “Get in the car, we’re going to pick up my niece.”

Theo’s eyes narrow and he doesn’t budge, “Your niece. Your niece in _ South America_.”

“That’s the one,” Peter agrees cheerfully.

“Why in the hell would I come with _ you_, to pick up some relative of yours, who I’ve never met, from South America?” Theo demands, sounding such an exquisite combination of disdainful and incisive that he could give Lydia a run for her money.

But Peter—he just smiles at him, slow and smooth and savoring every word of it as he answers, “Because we’re making a pit stop first.”

He sees the instant Theo realizes exactly what he means, every instinct in Theo’s body suddenly gone rigid like a hunting dog catching a scent. His eyes snap up to Peter’s and Peter lets his own bleed ice-blue, lets Theo search his face—his scent, Theo’s nostrils flaring wide—until Theo’s mouth curls in an equally-sharp grin, his eyes filling with molten gold, the feel of him gone a focused sort of wild; that same hunting dog straining at the leash. 

He gets in the car.

\---

Once Peter and Theo bring Cora back, it takes Deaton longer to walk up to the ruins of the Hale house from where he’d had to leave his sun-bleached car in the trees than to complete the ritual binding Scott’s mismatched pack to the once-Hale land beneath their feet. 

He asks Malia first. Or he tries to, anyway: Malia answers _ yes _ quickly enough that he has to stop, ask her again; the ritual that sort of irritatingly precise that it needs such finicky attention to detail. Cora is next, and if she rolls her eyes a little as she gives her blessing, the feel of her through the pack sense—sat at a slight tangent, not _ pack _ but not _ not _ pack, either—is sincere; she’s standing close enough to Derek that their shoulders are brushing, and every time one or the other sways, the other near-instantly and unconsciously moves to follow. Or maybe it’s not as unconscious as it seems; the first time Deaton asks Derek, Derek doesn’t respond, his attention on his sister. When Deaton asks again Derek jerks, slightly, looks wide-eyed up at Deaton and says _ yes, I do_, quickly but clearly.

It leaves Peter for last, which could be interpreted as Deaton having gone in age-order, youngest to oldest, and it’s even a plausible explanation for the constantly-whirring minds of Scott’s mismatched pack to latch onto, were they to look. But it isn’t the reason, and both Peter and Deaton know it. The real reason is that Deaton is still expecting Peter to change his mind, or finally reveal his so-far undeclared price, even as he turns to face Peter head-on, but Peter just beams at him, waits. 

Finally Deaton says, “Peter Hale, do you call upon the Hale pack bond to protect the McCall pack?”

There’s a collective held breath, like it’s only just occurring to several people present that Peter could—and if past behavior is any indication, is likely—to say no. Peter savors it, for a long second, his senses flaring out to catch the anxious dips to some of their scents, the nervous shuffle of several of their feet, but his eyes never leave Deaton’s. They’re dark as ever and made darker by the weak light filtering in through the tree cover, and they don’t waver from Peter’s.

“Yes,” Peter says, and ignores the not-quiet-enough relieved sighs emanating behind and around him, all his focus on Deaton; on Deaton’s unreadable face, on his unreadable scent, and unreadable pulse, even as the flare of old magic, tree and earth and _ moon _ magic, flares briefly around them before settling into a steady-but-constant _ press_.

Theo finds him, after. Deaton has long since disappeared and Scott’s mismatched pack is bouncing around the borders of the ruined Hale house, buoyed by the magic they can feel, even if they don’t quite understand it, even if they can’t quite wrap themselves in it like Peter can, like Cora can; like Derek can. They’re loud and boisterous, making plans for what to do about Monroe and her missing hunters now that the town and the land surrounding it are safe in the hands of the legacy of generations of Hale pack alphas and Hale pack betas and the Hale pack, itself, and they don’t notice Theo joining Peter at the edge of the tree line, his hands in his pockets as he looks out at them, mirroring Peter’s posture.

“You’re really not going to tell them,” Theo says, and it could be a question, but it isn’t.

Peter glances at him. He looks loose-limbed and satisfied, and he smells like Liam, both inside and out. It’d taken them a week to reach Cora and four days to return to Beacon Hills once they had her, and come bearing a lost Hale and the answer to a particularly vexing problem of Scott McCall’s or not, there had still been questions—several of them delivered at the end of Argent’s forty-five and the five points of Derek’s clawed right hand—about where they’d been. Apparently Liam’s interrogation of Theo had continued after Peter’s, and taken a different kind of turn.

“I’d hate to rob Argent’s spies of some sort of validation,” Peter answers blithely, and catches Theo’s sharp-curved smile out of the corner of his eye.

Theo doesn’t linger, both because he’s too smart to further risk the McCall pack’s still-aroused suspicions and because Liam almost immediately starts looking around for him. Peter can feel him tug unconsciously and inexpertly at the pack sense, at Theo still switchpoint-connected to Liam but with tendrils of him starting to reach out towards the rest of the McCall pack; at the rest of the McCall pack starting to reach tendrils back out to meet him. Smirking, Peter watches until Theo gets close enough that Liam can snag several fingers in his jacket pocket, reel him close in a not-so-subtle claiming as Theo makes a poor show of resisting, and then he turns, and leaves. 

Deaton’s scent is easy enough to follow. He smells like the concentrated animal musk of the clinic, like antiseptic and the muted buzz of electricity—his magic like a current felt always in the back of Peter’s jaw—and Peter expects to lose it long before it leads him to the man itself, Deaton disappearing from sight and nose and sense like he always had back when Peter would trail it for fun, Talia and his other responsibilities momentarily ignored. But when Peter reaches the end of the trail, stood outside of the clinic and staring up at the faded and weather-beaten sign, Deaton’s pulse is beating low and steadily inside.

Peter doesn’t move, immediately. He doesn’t move for some time, his eyes narrow and his mind working. 

The bell over the door jingles cheerfully when he pushes it open, the sound jarring in the otherwise quiet night. The waiting area is dark but there’s a light on in the office beyond it; the office beyond the mountain ash gate, closed and sealed and pressing on Peter’s awareness, blank and immovable. Peter lets the door close behind him—the bell jingling just as cheerfully as it had the first time—and waits.

Deaton appears in the doorway leading back to the office. Backlit by the weak light he’s pitched in darkness, limned in shadow, shoulder leaned up against the jamb and hands in his pockets, one ankle crossed loosely over the other. Quick as it had been, drawing on the power of the Hale pack soaked through into the very _ ground _ beneath Beacon Hills had been by no means trivial, but Deaton looks and smells and sounds unaffected; unchanged and unchanging and unchangeable. 

“Don’t you want to ask me why I did it?” Peter asks him finally, his tone meant to be light and his usual sort of laconic, but it comes out sounding like something else.

Deaton studies him for a long stretch of seconds, and then he says, “No.” 

But he moves, after he’s said it; he moves and he opens the mountain ash gate, and then he turns and walks back into the office. Peter stares after him, for a handful of seconds, for half a minute; a minute. 

And then he walks forward; he walks through the opened gate. 

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you liked, consider a comment a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/186775834470/out-in-the-wilds-of-you-and-i-eneiryu-teen).


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